80 THE NEW YOIKEI, OCTOBEI g, 1995 Make a Dog-Lover laugh with the miniature puppy-size edition  NE /YOfl.Fff BOOK OF DOG CARTOON5 101 hilarious dog cartoons by the great New Yorker cartoonists including, of course, the dog's all-time best friends Thurber and Boo th And for Cat People! '1e kitten-size edition o.f._ ................ i " = - NEW YOI I EI BOOK OF CAT CAffTOON5 Each 4 x 4 1/2, paperback Pubhshed by Knopf with his pipe and tweeds and slightly odd way of speech. He was from To- ronto, originally, Lucretia remembered, but he seemed more "English" than Canadian. More distant than Canadi- ans generally were. More impeccably, remotely courteous. He was teaching in Berkeley now, Simon said, and, yes, he liked it very much. He had found a nice house up on Euclid. His cats liked it, too; he had three. No, he was not married, but two of his three sons were living close by, as it happened. Why didn't you call me before? Lu- cretia wanted to ask him. And, When can we see each other? Are you busy to- night? But she managed simply to say, "I'd love to see you, could you come over for supper sometime soon?" He was terribly busy, as he was sure that she was, too, and besides, he in- sisted on taking her out to dinner. He would call. And then she didn't hear from him for a couple of weeks, during which she saw Burt more than she had meant to. She did manage at last to say, "Look, Burt, we can have dinner sometimes if you'd like to, but we can't, uh, go to bed." His whole face tightened. "I can hardly blame you for that. With my problem." "It's not that. Honestly." And hon- estly it was not, not his impotence but his whole severe, self-centered, some- what hostile character. She would have liked to say, I ust don't like you very much, but she said instead, "My heart just isn't in it. I'm sorry." HE should have been rewarded, Lucretia believed, by a phone call from Simon, asking her out to dinner at last. But she was not. Burr called several times, still wanting to see her, and each time the phone rang she imagined that it would be Simon, but it was not. After some time of this she thought, I am much too old to wait for phone calls. And so she called him. As she had more or less known that he would be, Simon was gallantly con- trite. He had meant to call her, he had looked forward to seeing her, but had been struck down with crazy busyness. Department politics, plus high-level university trouble. She reassured him. Perfectly all rightmshe had been busy, too. She in- vited him to dinner. Oh, no, he said, they must go out, and he named a place that he had wanted to try. On the waterfront. Sup- posed to be excellent food, and also at- tractive. Hard to get reservations, but he would try, and call her back. They settled on a night. He did call back, to say that he could get a table only at seven, too early, but worth a try. He would pick her up at six-thirty; he would very much look forward to see- ing her. Like a nervous girl, Lucretia won- dered what to wear. She was tempted to buy something new and wonderful, but she did not like the styles of that year She settled on her best old black dress, which everyone liked. At about six her phone rang, and Lucretia's heart sank, as she thought, It must be Burt or, worse, it's Simon, cancelling. It was Simon, not cancelling but apologizing: A meeting was holding him up, could they possibly meet at the restaurant? Driving down Broadway, through all the mess of lights and traffic, it oc- curred to Lucretia that she should have taken a cab; this way they would have to part publicly in some parking lot. The restaurant was in an old wharf building, remodelled: low, dark ceil- ings, low lights, a long, rich bar and spectacular view of the Bay and the Bay Bridge, Oakland. Black water and huge, dim, looming boas. At first, coming in, Lucretia could not see Simon, but then she said his name, and she was directed: there, he could have been no one else--tall, lean, fair Simon, with his narrow face, long nose, sardonic mouth. He was stand- ing, smiling, and then coming toward her, hands outstretched to her. They both said, "Oh, I'm so glad m'' and stopped, and laughed. Their dinner was much in that key, enthusiastically friendly, with good laughs. And relatively impersonal. Si- mon gracefiilly deflected anything verg- ing on the personal, did not discuss his two marriages. Instantly sensitive to his mood and needs (this was one of her major skills), Lucretia was amusing. She told funny stories about the paper, about people she had interviewed. And they exchanged travel notes; they both